Two people are hiring out their services in Castlemere – a prostitute with only hours to live, and a hired assassin with only hours to make his kill…

When the naked body of a young prostitute is found on a narrowboat on the Castlemere Canal, police enquiries focus on the nearby Barbican Hotel. For with a sales conference in progress there’s no shortage of men who could have met the girl there. But soon Superintendent Shapiro and his team have a great deal more to contend with. For the dead woman was not the only person to have hired herself out that night: a paid assassin is at large – and he is gunning for the conference organizer Philip Kendall.

‘Another hat’s off to Bannister, one of the genre’s best.’ Booklist

‘Bannister writes superior British policing novels, unsentimental yet unsensational, with finely turned, textured characters in the three principals and well worked-out plots.’ The Poisoned Pen